Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (7 page)

New York. Gary also told me, “I don’t know if you’ll
like
New York, but …”

Because I was a small-town kid. I’d grown up in a small town in Pennsylvania, lived in a small city in Oakland, lived in Berkeley. Oakland had one newspaper. There were a few others, like the
San Francisco Chronicle
, the San Francisco
Examiner
, the
Berkeley Gazette
, the
Sacramento Bee
, the
San Jose Mercury News
. But that was about it—and sometimes the San Francisco papers didn’t cover our games.

New York was something else. I wasn’t sure I was interested. And they weren’t interested in me.

I wasn’t the Yankees’ first pick in the free-agent draft. The one they went right out and signed first was Don Gullett, the pitcher for the Reds who’d just shut them down in the World Series. After that, Joe Rudi was Billy Martin’s choice. George Steinbrenner and Gabe Paul, the Yankees’ general manager, wanted to sign Bobby Grich and move him from second base back to shortstop, where he’d played in the minors.

I couldn’t blame them. I came up with Rudi. I played with him
for years and saw how great he was. An underrated player, but a great player. Good hitter, played well in the field both at first and in left. A complete player. He would’ve fit in very nicely with the Yankees.

Bobby Grich, I played with him in Baltimore, then later with the Angels. He was a terrific player, very athletic. He was one of the best defensive second basemen in our era. The Orioles only moved Grich out of shortstop because they already had Mark Belanger. He was also a great offensive player, and hit for power.

Some people thought neither Rudi nor Grich was a good fit because they were both right-handed hitters, in a Yankee Stadium that still tilted toward lefties in those days. That was still a huge park back then, even after they made over the original Stadium—430 feet to left-center, I think, 417 to center.

I think they still would’ve been fine, but as it worked out, both of them got hurt with the Angels in 1977 and missed most of the season. Grich came back strong; Joe was never really the same player again. But if they’d signed one of them instead of me, who knows what would have happened?

Whatever the Yankees decided, it seemed like it would have nothing to do with me. That was another rule that first year of free agency: You could only sign a maximum of two players—unless you had lost more than two free agents yourself.

The Yanks had already signed Gullett, which left them with room for just one more, Grich or Rudi, they had to choose. But the Angels were allowed to sign three guys because they’d lost that many free agents, and they snapped up Joe Rudi very quickly. Then Don Baylor, who’d been traded for me just the year before, got out of Oakland and signed with them, too. That decided it for Bobby Grich, who George Steinbrenner was courting very heavily. Grich had been friends and teammates with Baylor since their minor-league days with Baltimore, so once Don went to the Angels, Bobby wanted to go there, too.

I later found out that Steinbrenner did everything he could to sign Grich. He even told Bobby the Angels had manipulated the market, and he was going to file a protest with the league commissioner, maybe go to court. He told Grich he’d win the protest, and then Bobby would be left out in the cold.

The Boss bluffed a lot, but he wasn’t very good at it. Bobby Grich signed with the Angels. The commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, turned down the protest, and George didn’t bother to take it to court.

All of a sudden all the guys the Yankees had been looking at were off the market.

All that was left was me.

I’m not sure who it was who first advised George to take a good look at me. I don’t know just how important Gene Michael was with the team at the time, but I know later, when he was very influential in the makeup of the roster, he always loved left-handed power for Yankee Stadium. So did Birdie Tebbetts, the former catcher, who had become another one of George’s “baseball people.”

Or maybe it was George himself. George Steinbrenner always said he wanted to bring a big name to the Yankees. What he understood was marquee value, showbiz value. He saw the full potential of having a name in New York. He saw the potential with me.

I said it at the time: George Steinbrenner went after me like a guy trying to hustle a girl in a bar.

He went after me just the way Charlie Finley did, more than ten years earlier. Even though I was aware of what he was doing, the game he was playing, I have to admit I was flattered. I was charmed. He just made me laugh.

He flew me into New York, had me to his apartment at the Carlyle hotel, and asked me what kind of money it would take to sign me. I laughed at him trying to get around my agent like that.

I told him right back, “I just wanted to meet you, see what kind of money
you’re
talking about.”

So then he told me, “Well, we don’t want to spend more than two million. I don’t think we can do business.”

That was the nerve he had, right there, trying to lowball me already. He laughed, too. That was George. He loved to compete, loved to negotiate.

When he saw I was onto him, he took me to the ‘21’ Club for lunch.
And once we sat down at the table, we really got along pretty well, not like adversaries in a business deal. He really tapped a chord with me on certain ideas and philosophies he had. I could relate to all of it. His desire to win, his desire to build the franchise into a perennial champion. It might sound like “win at all costs,” but he also spoke about some of the players on the team with great affection, guys like Thurman Munson, who was the captain, Lou Piniella, Sparky Lyle, the new kid Willie Randolph, Chris Chambliss. I was very impressed by his commitment.

George also made sure that most of his closest business friends and advisers were there or came by to meet me: Tony Rolfe, Larry and Zach Fisher, Bill Fugazy, Mike Forrest. The one gentleman who wasn’t there that day, who he relied on heavily, was George’s wealthiest partner. I had to meet Lester Crown before he signed me, because George had such great respect for him. These were all men who became friends and supporters during my time in New York, and they were some of the most successful businessmen in New York City.

The ‘21’ Club was a revelation for me. There were all these business cards and items that hung from the ceiling and these older businessmen in suits and ties there. I quickly understood it was a fraternity for the men who ran the business of New York City. I looked around and said, “There isn’t even a carpet on the floor! I have to wear a tie to get into this place, and they don’t even have wall-to-wall carpeting!”

After we ate and met everyone, George did this very smart thing. He sent his driver on, and we walked back to the Carlyle. And as we walked to his apartment, all along the way people in the street noticed. They came up to us, saying, “Mr. Steinbrenner,” or “George, bring Reggie to New York. Get him signed to a contract.” Or, “We love you, Reggie. We want you here. This is the place for you.”

I mean, all these kinds of comments from cabdrivers and the people on the street. Bus drivers stopped in the middle of the street to call out to us. The passengers opened their windows to call out to us, people waved. It was like a movie.

I don’t think he had it planned. I think it just went that way. I
think
he didn’t have it planned. Or put it this way: Maybe George already knew his city that well. Maybe he just knew exactly how it was going
to go. This was really my first time walking around New York like that. For all the times we’d played there before, I just stayed at the team hotel with the team and went to Yankee Stadium and back.

I just felt I was here to play for a good team and win a few games. To take care of myself, Mom and Dad, and my family. New York was a great place to do it, and the Yankees were a great team with an owner who wanted to win. But when I thought about it later, about everybody coming up to us on the street … yeah, it was exciting. It was exciting for sure. Yes, it certainly influenced me.

In the end, George just outhustled everybody else for me. I felt he dealt with me as a young man and a person, and I respected that. I also recognized something of myself in him. I knew even then he was a little crazy and a hustler to get it done. And the city acted as an assistant agent for him. It was easy to see he wanted to win, and win in New York for the fans!

He knew how to close the deal, too.

The day before Thanksgiving, Gary and the other people I had advising me in my free-agent negotiations went and camped out at the Hyatt near the Chicago airport. We told anyone who was still interested, come and make your final offer.

I just wanted this done. I wanted to know where I was going to play in 1977 and who I was going to play for.

George was out in Culver, Indiana, visiting his son Hank at the military academy he went to there. He made us promise he’d be the last person we talked to, no matter what.

Then, early that morning, he chartered a small plane and flew into Chicago to make his offer to us. He flew back to Indiana to spend the rest of the day with his family, then came back out again that night to nail down the deal.

I have to admit I felt a little nostalgic, thinking of the way that Charlie Finley had my dad and me out to his office in Chicago, then flew us to his farm in Indiana, a little over ten years before. I have no idea if George Steinbrenner knew anything about that. Probably not. But here he was, just as ready and willing to close the deal.

He paid attention. You grow up black in this country, in the time I did, people did not pay attention to you unless you did something they didn’t approve of. They didn’t
want
to see you. Except if you were doing something they found abhorrent, like dating their daughter or riding their son’s bike. You want someone to pay attention, to want you. To take you for the content of your character, not the color of your skin, as Dr. King said. It makes a nice change.

We reached agreement on most of the deal that night. George stayed over in town, and we had breakfast on Thanksgiving morning and agreed to the rest of it. I told Mr. Steinbrenner I would be a Yankee, and we wrote out the deal on a table napkin.

Right after that, I heard back from the Dodgers. They offered $3 million, just for openers. The Yankees’ final offer was $2.96 million, with a portion of it deferred or in bonuses. George told me they could only pay me $200,000 a year in up-front salary, because he’d told Thurman Munson, the captain, that nobody on the team would be paid more than he was—and he’d have to give him a raise as it was. The rest of my money would be deferred, or bonus money for signing.

That was fine with me. I was fine with getting that money later. But then here were the Dodgers, offering me $3 million
to start
, to play in the park and the city where I really wanted to be. There had already been an offer from Montreal for $5 million, and then the San Diego Padres came in with a late offer that was for $3.4 million. These were all starting offers.

I didn’t have anything signed, but I had a handshake deal with George, and I wouldn’t break it. I couldn’t get out of it morally. My dad taught me better. I shook his hand. He made a big effort to fly to see me, to bring me to New York and introduce me to his friends and the organization—to tell his crowd that I was going to be a Yankee. He put his hand out, I shook it, and I gave him my word. We wrote the basics of the deal on a restaurant napkin. That was it.

I thought later about how it all might have turned out. The different teams I could’ve signed with. Baltimore was a place where I was very comfortable, a wonderful franchise, good people involved; a lot of
my family was there. Certainly, in Los Angeles, I would have had a wonderful time.

Now, I know it’s true: I don’t think you ever get the fanfare and the recognition and the support that you can create in New York with the media and the fans there. It’s just not the same anywhere else. But there’ve been players who have done it other places. Look at what Michael Jordan did in Chicago, what Willie Mays and Joe Montana did in San Francisco, what Jim Brown did in Cleveland, or what Tiger Woods did worldwide for himself. If you’re great, it doesn’t matter where you are.

You think about the other teams. Baltimore, even after the free agents they lost, when I went to New York, we beat the Orioles out by just a couple games every year. And when we met the Dodgers in the World Series, I would’ve been on the other team. I would’ve been there with them, instead of doing my best to beat them with the Yankees.

I’m not saying I was the balance of power or that I would’ve made all the difference. But I represented a final piece at that time for a few different franchises. Things might’ve been very different if I had been on the Dodgers or the Orioles.

I gave my word to George. So I signed with the Yankees, and he brought me back to New York for a press conference.

Now, I had already played in two World Series. But I had no idea what a big press conference was until I got to New York. I mean, in Oakland, we had two or three regular beat writers. In Baltimore, there was the
Baltimore Sun
with Phil Hersh and Jim Henneman, I think, the
Washington Post
with Tom Boswell. That was it.

In New York, there were thirty-plus beat writers. Thirty-plus. From three different states. And a lot more of them at that first press conference. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and occasionally Washington, D.C., and Philly scribes came to New York as well. It was—
is
—the media capital of the world.

They had the press conference in the Versailles Terrace Room of the Americana Hotel. The room was full of reporters; there were TV cameras everywhere. Thurman Munson was there for it. I really
appreciated that; I thought we were getting off on the right foot. Everywhere you looked was plus. George was there, Roy White was there, the media were there, my mom and dad were there. Everything was just wonderful. How could it not have been?

But I had no idea that you had to be so aware of everything you said (and still have to). You had to really listen to what you said before it came out and in print. You had to understand that certain words projected different connotations, certain words were inflammatory. I had to learn on the spot how to say things. And I didn’t do a very good job of that my first year in New York.